#hellatus 2015

[spngeorg]

Episode 61: 4.01 Lazarus Rising

HERE WE GO! We all know what this one is. This is the one where the destiel starts!

and some other stuff happens, but come on folks... WE GET CAS NOW! Watching him grow into the person we will know at the end of the series is an absolutely glorious journey I’m thrilled to talk about with everyone now. :D

As promised in the podcast, I have a lot more reference posts for folks to read this week, and I hope at least some of it feels worth it to y’all.

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag for this episode, which is 23 pages long lol (told y’all this was a big one, I wasn’t kidding) so I picked a few posts I feel are most foundational to how I think about and discuss this episode:

Lizbob’s Hellatus Rewatch post for this episode, from 2015

some Handprint notes

notes on the gas station and the magazine rack

my 2017 rewatch notes

a bit on the metaphysics of Cas resurrecting Dean

old but excellent meta on Castiel’s arc through about s9 or so...

a short and sweet thought about destiel

an entry from Lizbob’s Dean And Cas Are In Love meta series 

how the heck did they end up in Pontiac, Illinois?

some thoughts on Sam and Ruby

The art of Retcon Continuity: fitting Azazel into the larger narrative now

The extended barn scene (no music, totally different feel to it)

The Three Day DeanCasVersary Post on tumblr (and a slightly outdated version on ao3... I’ve updated the tumblr version three or four times since I stashed it on ao3 during the tittyban when this post got flagged as porn lol)

We also have casting sides for Castiel, casting sides for “Kristy,” aka Ruby, and casting sides for Pamela, in addition to the call sheet/shooting pages for Pamela. And I can’t recommend enough doing a compare/contrast between the casting and shooting pages of the exact same scene. They’re clearly the same scene, but not at all the same scene, you know? Just go read, and understand why casting scripts often bear passing resemblance to the “real” script used for an episode, and understand why these “fake” scripts are sent out for casting purposes, so the “real” storyline won’t be compromised in the process of casting the thing... (with special side-eye to anyone who thinks The Winchesters script was the final production draft lol).

I think that’s enough words to leave everyone with, so I’ll leave off my usual rambling summary. :D

Listen now on AnchorFM, or wherever you enjoy podcasts!

[mittensmorgul]

Just read your post where you said that s4 went almost exactly how Chuck might have wanted it. Had a horrible thought: what if it was HIM that changed Dean's voicemail msg to Sam calling him a monster? That voicemail has always been a huge sticking point for me (does Sam even know Dean never said those things???), but now I guess I can blame it on Chuck instead of Ruby or Zach or whoever?

Heck... I mean, I think (ironically now, knowing how much Zachariah disdained Chuck when he didn’t know he was God all that time) it’s amusing to think about now that *we* know he’s God... I get a kick out of thinking now that all of Zachariah’s plots, all of his schemes, his direct threats to Chuck-- showing him visions of what will happen and telling Chuck to write, and even the role he cast for Chuck in his awful end!verse as the inventory manager of their camp with little other influence in anything-- were just so... petty in hindsight. Aah, if only he’d known the guy he disregarded so badly was actually the one writing all those idiotic plots for Zachariah. :’D

Full disclosure: I wrote about this in a fic once... and suggested in that fic that it was Zachariah who changed it, because he is just that petty. There’s also a strong argument that it could’ve been Ruby, but I never thought she had that kind of power. Then again, maybe she did, when push came to shove maybe she could’ve altered a voicemail. But we do know it is within the power of angels to do that, because Cas has done it before, too... in 4.15. Or I should say, we don’t know if it was a voicemail or just a phone call he faked as having come from Bobby, but either way it amounts to the same result-- voice faked over phone. The only demon we’ve ever seen do something similar was Asmodeus, and that was only because he’d stolen and been consuming Gabriel’s grace... But who knows what powers Ruby may have had at her disposal for doing her job to bring Sam to kill Lilith? So I’ve always figured it didn’t matter much one way or the other in canon, since plot-wise it was equally likely to have been BOTH of them. Especially since we would learn that Heaven and Hell were both working toward the same goals of starting the apocalypse.

So now, in a world where we KNOW Chuck was God, that he wasn’t just writing down his “visions” but actively guiding the story as he wrote, it’s incredibly amusing to imagine that neither Ruby nor Zachariah even knew about the altered message, and that Chuck had just changed it as a bit of insurance to make sure his plot came to fruition. Because that’s DEFINITELY something that’s within in his power. And he is just that manipulative.

Here begins the Shameless Self Promotion portion of this reply:

(for reference, I wrote about this in the sequel to Revenge of the Subtext, called These Are Words In A Script. I wrote that fic back in 2015, during the post s10 hellatus, just for reference purposes on where it fits into canon... but I’m still lol’ing at the title in this post 14.20 world, even though it’s a line from 6.15 The French Mistake, since TFM is the premise for what’s happening in this fic series-- zapped to a world where they’re actors, but a very DIFFERENT alternate universe than the one in 6.15 (Jensen and Misha are married in that universe, there is no explicit cockles anyway, even if they aren’t OUR Jensen and Misha)... and the follow up fic is Sam having to protect Jensen and Misha for three days while they’re trapped in the Supernatural Universe. This bit about Zachariah having changed the message was one of the things they told Sam about, that they believed he deserved to know about his own life. It’s in Chapter 5: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5437508)

(or read the whole series if you’re interested, it’s about a Supernatural convention Dean and Cas have to pretend to be their actors at in an alternate universe, so... fun if you enjoy SPN cons! :”D: https://archiveofourown.org/series/327056)

Funny enough, in that fic, one of the things they also tell Sam was that some folks seriously believed that Chuck had been God all along... because I wrote this before s11 began airing. The fic didn’t post until 12/17/2015 only because the original fic was a dcbb, so I couldn’t post a “sequel” to it until after the dcbb had completed that year. and heads up to anyone who does go read it? I wrote it, so the premise is destiel, but the fic is set in a completely different alternate universe, like the one from 6.15 but one where Misha did not get murdered by a rogue angel, and not *our* universe... just fyi...

[wigglebox]

Wait wait wait- So from what I'm seeing, someone made a Destiel blog on here? Even tho they don't like the ship? And they thought it was some groundbreaking betrayal revealing themselves cause they don't actually ship it??

Yeaaaaah so

Nancy, an anti-misha, anti-destiel, anti-fun-loving-anything-nice person on the wincest spectrum of things made a destiel blog (originating back to like, 2015) and then made some GRANNNNDDD REVEAALLL yesterday or something. 

Nancy herself -- like -- if you had the sweetest, nicest person ordained by God as being basically the most saintly person on earth, say anything nice about Misha or Destiel, she’d call them a bitch and make a post about them on her blog. 

Now remember, we’re not talking about some juvenile blogger: She’s a grown ass woman. 

You can see the post here. 

She made a sucessful destiel blog with over 5k followers and then revealed her TRRRUUUUEEEE identity to make us all QUIVER WITH FEEAARRRR AND SHOCK AND JUST PURE HORROR!!!!!! and basically only just proved that the ship is popular and we are a pretty tight knit community. 

And she keeps trying to spin it in a way that proves we’re SHEEPLE and we just SUCK and we’re all just BITCHES but like -- she clearly has no ground to stand on. 

OH man -- she really showed us! 

Basically, it’s just some silly fandom shit that’s gonna last for a couple days to break us out of our hellatus doldrums so thanks Nancy! 

TL;DR, to quote @tinkdw : When you’re so stupid you get turned into a meme. 

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

*screeches* season 14 is how close?

Hellatus is almost over and I have... done... nothing... with it :’)

I’m imagining myself during season 45 when they’re fighting Fuckhands McMike, like ...I should write those 47842 post I’ve wanted to write since 2015

[ice-magician]

Misha for President

Hush little Donald Trump, don't you cry Misha's gonna sing you a lullaby And as he sings you fast to sleep he whispers "I'm the Overlord now, and I'm on fleek." Donald lays his head to rest Vice President Moose puffs out his chest From the side First Jensen says "We were never married, of course, but Misha, I want a divorce."

[nyxnarciss]

Sam's going to spend Christmas in the cage....

[lucifersangel6]

Now onto Hellatus

[mittensmorgul]

1.12 vs s12

Faith is still my #1 favorite episode of this entire series. I don’t even know if I can watch it objectively and pull parallels to s12, because I just fall into this story so hard I can hardly see daylight. I will try.

My 2015 Hellatus Rewatch post on this episode can be found here:

http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/123747496505/spn-112-faith

So I’m only gonna point out stuff I didn’t already mention in that long long post.

This is their first case where the truly evil thing is a human being and not a “monster.” Yes, a reaper was the being carrying out the killings, but it had been bound by a regular old person to do her will. Roy was all about healing the worthy, but Sue Ann’s goal was also to punish the people she believed were wicked-- someone who protested against their church, an openly gay teacher, and then Dean himself.

Sue Ann, though, she truly believes she was chosen by the Lord to reward the just and punish the wicked. It’s hubris, playing god.

(also Dean proves his knowledge of the lore by identifying a reaper based solely on its ability to give and take life, brilliant Dean is brilliant)

Also, I think Sam’s moment of guilty realization here is important to the situation in s12 (because hubris is bad):

SAM: Yeah. So, I put together a list of everyone Roy's healed, six people over the past year, and I cross-checked them with the local obits. Every time someone was healed, someone else died. And each time, the victim died of the same symptom LeGrange was healing at the time. DEAN: Someone's healed of cancer, someone else dies of cancer? SAM: Somehow. LeGrange...he's trading a life for another. DEAN: Wait, wait, wait. So, Marshall Hall died to save me? SAM: (looking upset) Dean, the guy probably would've died anyway. And someone else would've been healed. DEAN: You never should've brought me here. SAM: Dean, I was just trying to save your life. DEAN: But, Sam, some guy is dead now because of me. SAM: I didn't know.

(okay now if you didn’t go read the rewatch notes, and you don’t understand how this relates to s12 and acts of hubris and monster genocide for purely selfish purposes... then go read the rewatch notes and it shouldn’t be hard to make all those connections).

To sum up: Playing God never works out well, even if your intentions are good. The end.

[idjitproofwings]

The supernatural fandom right now.

[whydidithavetobeclowns]

Why is it still not October yet?

[mittensmorgul]

I'm late to the game and missed out on years of meta since this is my first season watching live. What were you expecting to happen at the end of season 10? Some of your posts recently mentioned about MoC Dean and the dark parts of himself vs darkness being forced upon him (or something like that). You don't have to write out a big long thing if you're not in the mood, but what tag should i search on your blog to read more about this? No rush on the reply, I just love your meta! Thanks!

Hi there! And Heck. Thanks! :D

I could’ve sworn I had a tag for this spec, but in the Great Tumblr Tag Breaking Disaster of 2k16, I sorta... lost most of my tags.

I have been sitting here trolling through my ancient posts (heh, 2015... ancient)

From the midseason 10 hellatus:

http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/105381976230/the-mark-of-cain-deans-salvation-cass-grace

From toward the end of s11:

http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/144685272700/i-never-liked-the-grace-cure-idea-mostly-because

I mean there was a lot of foreshadowing all through the first half of s10 about the mark being a curse, making it about some sort of struggle internal to Dean

The episode I specifically thought was a small version of the finale we expected was 10.11. It ended up being the key to s11 instead, and not applying to Dean himself, but Chuck and Amara...

http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn%2010.11

But all the buildup in the first half of s10 of the Mark being “Dean’s Darkness,” and then suddenly all the parallels after 10.14 are framing it as something more akin to possession...

I really wish I’d a) had a better tagging system back in s10, and b) not had my tags self-destruct last year...

But I’ll just say follow any links in some of those tags and posts above, and you’ll probably find far more on the whole soul-grace cure theory for the mark... (which evolved into the grand unification via love theory that explained s11-- and Chuck and Amara’s resolution-- instead of s10, and Dean’s cure...

In case you didn’t see all my posts on the subject from last week, I think most of them landed in this tag:

mittens makes peace with s10 via dabb's spitewriting of s12: an ongoing saga

[the-one-without-the-wings]

I’m actually surprised we don’t have any kind of apocalypse this hiatus

[half-dead-hunter]

This hellatus I have read more destiel fanfiction than I have ever in my life. I am so proud.

[sonofabitch-deanwinchester]

Anyone else missing this???